Well, this can't be a good sign. Samsung has told CNET that the company will not be launching its Windows RT tablet in the United States, citing a lack of demand and consumer confusion. After I spent an afternoon in my country's largest electronics retailer, it's hard not to agree with Samsung.

Indeed. Standardization is one thing ARM really, really needs in order to become a more attractive a choice in general, and only once standardization is achieved will it really be viable for proper enthusiast-use.

I could certainly imagine a future where e.g. the SoC and its RAM are just soldered-on to a motherboard and enthusiasts buy the bundle as-is as that would certainly ease things for the manufacturers and vendors, but for that to happen there must be a proper spec for booting the devices in a standard way and for accessing their resources. Also, it would require the manufacturers to actually start providing up-to-date drivers for their systems.

Alas, given the almost complete lack of interest from the SoC-manufacturers towards enthusiast-/desktop-markets and even actually-working software such a future is likely FAR away.